Stylos is the blog of Jeff Riddle, a Reformed Baptist Pastor in North Garden, Virginia. The title "Stylos" is the Greek word for pillar. In 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul urges his readers to consider "how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar (stylos) and ground of the truth."

Thursday, February 09, 2017

The ancient Greek roots of the confinement of women to the home in Islam

When reading Ibn Warraq’s analysis of women in Islam, I was
struck by this statement:

The veil was adopted by the Arabs
from the Persians, and the woman’s obligation to stay closed in at home was a
tradition copied from the Byzantines, who in turn had adopted an ancient Greek
custom (Why I am Not a Muslim, p.
315).

What I found intriguing is the idea that the Muslim practice
of primarily confining women to the home has its roots in the ancient Greek
practice. Classicist William Stearns Davis in a work on daily life in ancient
Athens observes:

An Athenian never allows his wife to
visit the Agora. She cannot indeed go outside the house without his express
permission, and only then attended by one or two serving maids; public opinion
will likewise frown upon the man who allows his wife to appear in public too
freely; nevertheless there are compensations. Within the home the Athenian
woman is within her kingdom (A Day in Old
Athens, p. 39).

In Roman society, though women had considerably more freedom
than in ancient Greece, including the general freedom to leave the home and to
appear in public, there were still significant limitations. William Stearns Davis describes the status of
women in Rome in the early second century A.D.:

Roman
women are, indeed, excluded from seats in the Senate and from the long-defunct
right to vote in the public assemblies. They cannot command armies nor receive
governorships, although every now and then an angry senator vainly proposes a
resolution that governors shall not take their wives along with them to the
provinces, lest the latter constitute themselves the real rulers of the
district. Women do not act as judges or jurors. Nay more: legally, they are
under legal disabilities calculated to stir the rage of their “equal suffrage”
sisters of a later day. They have always the status of minors, and are subject
to the legal control of either father, guardian, or husband to their dying hour
(A Day in Old Rome, p. 60).

One of the ironies of
modern times is the fact that Christianity is often depicted by its critics as
patriarchal and misogynistic, when, in fact, the spread of Christianity,
especially in the West, gave women unprecedented dignity and liberty.